to think certain of my single friends are single because they are just far too fussy

Got several friends in their 30s who are still single and go on about it the whole time. They are all very attractive, interesting, fun, intelligent, have good jobs etc.

I do sympathise to a point, but AIBU to suggest that perhaps they should be a bit less fussy? OK so not suggesting they should go out with any old Tom, Dick or Harry as you need certain standards, but AIBU to think maybe they should sometimes 'give it a go' with someone who seems to have some potential rather than just rejecting men instantly if they don't tick all their boxes.

I was slightly unsure about DP for our first few dates as he was very shy and I didn't think he was my type, but now I am head over heels in love and would not be without him. So so very glad I gave him a shot and didn't write him off.

Also feel like my friends are sometimes not very self-aware - one friend refused to date a guy as he didn't have his own home and car (neither does she) and another rejected a guy because he was slightly overweight (she is hardly Kate Moss herself)........

They also seem to be attracted to good looking / trendy guys who are obviously complete plonkers - fair enough when you are 21 but thought people would have cottoned on and learnt to identify the good guys by the time they hit 30.........

Not meaning to be unsympathetic with this post, just thinking of the best ways to help my friends help themselves so to speak.

a lot of my single friends are very fussy, and IMO they're dead right, they've got good lives they've built for themselves all by themselves and someone has to really enhance it in order to make the sacrifices a relationship involves, I don't think they should settle for the sake of any old okayish man!

but then there's the ones that complain about being single all the time, are constantly on the pull (can't go out for a chat with them as they're looking over your shoulder scoping the joint for men) but are really fussy in a nasty way - and they are NOT the ones with the fantastic lives/bodies themselves! and are very rude to anyone who doesn't tick their stupid lists (which rarely have much to do with personality, its all hair colour, acceptable jobs, own property...)

I met dh when we were 17 and married young and had our first kid young so we sort of grew up together.

I have friends in their 40s that are single and want a partner but have good jobs, nice houses and can do what the hell they like so get selfish in a totally understandable way.. I wouldn't want to he moulding or compromising now and understand why they don't.

Some of them may be fussy but what is too fussy, when the alternative is "settling" for someone they many not really be in love with, realising that doesn't work in the long run and ending up with an expensive divorce when by staying single they might, just might, have still met someone they actually do love? Ugh - the thought of having to kiss some ugly bloke you don't really fancy, just in order to not be single! Or should they just will themselves to fall in love, somehow, anyhow? Is that even possible?

I think the days of thinking of unmarried women as "spinsters" left on the shelf are gone - it was surely relevant in older times when women couldn't earn their own money.

That said, I do have friends who are fussy about the wrong things. One is only attracted to older men with money. I don't think expecting a grown man to be able to drive and not live at home with his parents is unreasonable though!

I also have female friends who are simply not that attractive, or who are just damned annoying to spend too much time with (talk incessantly/unreliable/flaky/lazy). It could be that many of them simply don't get much choice.

Most good relationship type people will enter relationships early on in life.

you sound like a smug married TBH OP. how long have you been with your DP? i'm betting anything you were just as guilty of joining in with their conversations about why whoever you dated wasn't the right one before you met your DP but now you've found him you're think they should just get on with it.

fwiw, i've done the "just give him a go" tactic and it done nothing but lower my self esteem bit by bit because the whole time all i felt i was doing was settling for something i didn't want. now i'm being super fussy because i know what i want and i'm not wasting my time on someone that's not it.

I too have a small number of friends like this, and if I've heard "but why should I have to settle just because I'm thirty-whatever years old" once, I've heard it a hundred times. Fine, but then don't complain about not having what ''settling" would get you!

What I want to know is whether we are looking, forty or fifty years down the line, at a large chunk of the female population aging in singledom. Can you imagine how much fun these women will have??! They'll have had a lifetime of earning with no kids to relieve them of their salaries, they can travel the world with friends and lovers, they can behave as irresponsibly as they want to...there's much to recommend it, really!

I also have female friends who are simply not that attractive, or who are just damned annoying to spend too much time with (talk incessantly/unreliable/flaky/lazy). It could be that many of them simply don't get much choice.

Wow I hope my friends would never describe me in that way. If they're are so damn annoying why are you even friends?

Most good relationship type people will enter relationships early on in life

I have a friend who has a ridiculously long tick box list (in her head). She's been single for over 5 years and only been on a handful of dates. While I agree there's settling, I feel it is quite possible she could have relaxed her list slightly and at least gone on some dates with guys that met 80% of her tick boxes because so many of us end up with people that, on paper, we wouldn't have imagined ourselves with.

One that annoys me more than anything is hair colour. Women who will only date a guy who has dark hair. I mean, seriously??? I'm a chap and I couldn't give a hoot about hair colour. Some women change their hair colour a lot. Would I dump a woman who had been blonde when I starting dating her and after 6 months decided to return to natural brunette? Same bloody person! I think I'd be regarded as ridiculously shallow for doing so.

I have a good friend who was always popular with men when we were in our teens and 20s. She had her pick, and she was very choosy, had an ideal of marrying a doctor, not liking bald men, counting out anyone even vaguely overweight, only going for classic tall/dark/handsome etc etc.

Now she is in her mid/late 30s, never been in a serious long term relationship and still just as picky. Internet dating has made her even worse. Her 'specification'/list is so long. She rules people out for the most shallow reasons.

I realise 'moronic' was very strong, but my experience is coloured by my very, very bad experiences of (other people in the family's) marriages of convenience, where materialistic considerations significantly outweighed emotional ones in the decision to get engaged. It is grim.

I personally think it does take kissing a lot of frogs to find your prince! I think the issue is that a lot of us through our relationships that don't work move towards rejigging our ideal so that eventually we find a lover who is so right for us.

I love my DH to bits but it took me most of my 20s/30s to reach the point where I was able to fully appreciate all of who he was when I met him. I knew someone very similar to him when I first went to Uni who I wouldn't date because he was so outside my 'ideal'. DH always says ruefully "if only we'd met when we were students' and realistically I know that we wouldn't be where we are today if we had....(if that makes sense).

I have a gorgeous friend who finally at nearly 50 seems to be finding happiness with a divorced, with child, craftsman, rather than a model-like academic with no heart (her former type). So fantastic but sad too that she wasted her 'fertile' years on men who just weren't emotionally there for her ever, chasing her dream man. Of everyone I know she would have been the most suited to motherhood. Thankfully and finally she changed the parameters for her man and it seems to be working...

Boo - ha, neither, actually, but my friend is the one who insists a guy must have dark hair and I just don't get it. I do agree that internet dating does encourage or promote 'the ideal' scenario.

I went on Plentyoffish once and there you could search people by almost anything you wanted to, almost down to where they buy their underwear. I never used anything other thana) distance from meb) an age rangec) must be a non-smokerd) not do drugs

Just that if you give people a chance and not rule them out for petty reasons they might surprise you. And if they don't I would never say settle for them!!!

Also be self aware. You might want a super-model doctor with a trust fund, but if you are ugly, fat, stupid and poor yourself he might not want you..... It's not about settling just about having realistic expectations